The first piece of tech for doing sous vide was a piece of lab equipment used in chemistry.
Its a technique of making stuff work and can be done with a thermometer and a pot of water.

I would say definitely get a vacuum sealer, you can do the cold water and ziploc trick but it will never really truly work and I had to use a wet towel to keep the food submerged when I was doing it. But that means you can still if you are ok with weighting the bag.
I buy a bulk box of the premade bags from a restaurant supply store cause they are cheap and then I can individually seal meat when I buy it and freeze them, makes portioning and doing a quick sous vide faster too.

Then if you want to be cheap you can get a used immersion cooker, it doesnt touch food, just water usually. I usually use a pot on some cork board wrapped in a towel. Some chefs really like using a cooler cause it is insulated.
ANOVA is a good brand just get controls on the device cause it is just easier and faster.

Ok here is another I am fond of.

Make a large cheap meat, (chicken thighs, pork roast, tritip) butcher into smaller pieces and wrap well and freeze, even better if you can vacuum seal it. You can basically sous vide in a pot of boiling water and then use in lots of ways. Fajitas, casserole, poutine, shredded BBQ sandwich, etc.

I do this with tonkatsu and charsiu which are nice to have and do as a big batch.

Bread machine, and if you can get a cheap pizza stone or large piece of metal you can help it out as that will act as a heat sink and help it maintain a temp

Oh shoot also, you said vegetarian so I didnt include this but you could probably make it work.

Okonomiyaki:

Its practically fish flavored pancake batter filled with cabbage and other veggies fried on a griddle. Invented in japan after WW2 to use scraps and make them tasty.
I make mine with bacon or cheap slices of ham on bottom but you can skip that, but I would still crack an egg into the center.

If you look around at street food post WW2 in the world you will find a lot of it is cheap and tasty and with a globalized market easier to get the ingredients/recipes.

A lot of food history is making the best out of what you got and when you look around there are some incredible depression era and post war dishes from all over the world.

Like it can be amazing what you can make with basic ingredients that can taste good that some ancestor from a different world figured out with what scraps they had laying around. A bunch of my favorite dishes are like that. Okonomiyaki especially so.

Get a pressure cooker and a bread maker from a thrift store or Facebook marketplace. Your bread will be cheap and plentiful. Get some herbs and veggies to spice them up. I’m a big fan of rosemary, garlic and onion and then dipping it in olive oil with some cheese on the side.
Or make pizza dough dough setting and make a quick pizza or even bread pizza

I adapt what I make to what is cheap to purchase at the time. Sometimes it is lots of eggs and quiche, sometimes it is specific veggies, stuffing them with rice and cheese and lentils and baking them is nice.

And to finish off here is my ancestors depression dish which I swear by.
Eggs tomato and cheese:
Saute onion, and green pepper or celery until sweated, add salt, pepper and thyme
Add a large can of tomatoes or 4-5 large tomatoes cut into chunks and let simmer until liquid
Reduce heat and add a soft cheese (cheddar spread or american cheese works well cause it melts well | generous 1/2 cup
Once melted mix in slowly 6 scrambled eggs and raise heat a little until it cooks and thickens stirring constantly.
Serve on bread.

Yeah, words have meaning to the person saying them, but aren’t guaranteed to have the same for the receiver.

Its why we try so hard to share a reality and define things.
And we have faith that we are on the same side of understanding.
Its also why the world is fucked up right now, no faith, we need to know, and we quiz and push to narrow our world to just those we can be sure of.

Do you really think its worth it to only talk to yourself? Or do you figure out how to share how you feel and what you see in the world with others?

Yup, what other person said, heat pump dryers.

They use the insides of the dryer as the closed loop of heating and cooling. Heating air through clothes to get moisture then cooling it on the other side to condense it. Generates water but doesnt have a vent.
Neat use of the tech.

I mean literally the same machine as a rock grinder, generated heat and tumbling items smacking into each other.

But like they are soft. And if you don’t use as much heat it is even gentler, which is why the driers that act as a dehumidifier without heat are even better better.

I just got The Coup - Genocide and Juice
whole album and have been enjoying the heck out of it even if I still can’t find Sorry To Bother You physically.

Otherwise I “discovered” Ghost: The Future is a Foreign Land has been hurting me in a nice way.

That feels like that weird issue that Melinda Gates has of not being able to spend her profits from her stocks fast enough.
Money just begets more money.

You know if you have it or not these days.

Store those sins away for a rainy day.

HR was supposed to provide the Visa as I was going for a ship transfer and the political rallies and the north korea missile definitely didnt help but I did get to see fireworks on a beach after a night of crepe cakes and BBQ.
I actually was the reason the company implemented a system where a person was hired to check all visas manually from then on.

The main trouble was the HR Manager tried to dock my pay for the cost of hotels and flights and tried to get me fired for saying no and I threatened to sue. Had to meet with the captain who thought the whole story was very funny including me staying at his standard hotel room at a very nice hotel in the bahamas.

I just want to know what its like to go terminal velocity and see if my luck is bad enough that I miss the ground. But knife and skydiving is my plan for how.

Oh not retiring. Just the sun blowing up.

I am both jealous of and horrified by your brain.

This is so insane and yet true.

Oh for sure just trying to be helpful.

The new popular trend is bunkers underground with staff in shock collars, best of luck with their assassination attempts.

Nah, thats just statistics.

It only gets to not rise the next day once and those are pretty good odds if you put that over top of all the other days it has already. I already don’t win when the odds are 1 in 4, I’m not getting that lucky.

No my point is that your gonna need everyone else to not be stupid too.
All it takes is someone else in your ivory tower starting an apartment fire and that they didnt design fire exits or suppression strategies cause it would impact the look of it.
No one does anything alone in this world. The rest of our stupidity rubs off eventually on your life.

Retirement math would be pretty dreary if you have to pay rent.

lOl. The worth of my assets and all my accounts is about $13,000 and that includes my 401k and I have been working for more than a decade and rent.

I’m a weirdo but also I know that I’m also completely average for level of fucked.

Dude we have shockingly similar overarching stories but my HR manager firing was for costing the company I work for 10s of thousands of dollars for not having the right visa to work in china and getting stuck in south korea for weeks due to the easter holiday making it so they forgot where they left me until I got ahold of someone again.

My retirement plan is skydiving.